Contemporary "Basketry" Museum

University of Moratuwa (UoM), Faculty of Architecture, Department of Architecture, Moratuwa

Project idea

Though the symbolic image of Kalutara, Sri Lanka has been dominated by the “Chaithya” making it a prominent religious center which also displaced significant socio-cultural heritage of the place built upon the basketry.

Very recently the basket hall was closed and the project aims a fusion between these traditional craftsman and contemporary artists to empower and regain the lost identity through a contemporary building responding to the pros and cons of the urban context.

Project description

After a successful 100 years of Service, in the beginning of the 2018 this basket hall was closed due to lack of patronage and investments. And still people practices basketry around town in a small scale lacking a place to market their product. The project proposal of CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM aims a fusion between these traditional craftsman and contemporary artists to regain the lost identity through a contemporary way of designing a new building which is designed around a well-organized and foreseen master plan for the macro context solving and responding architecturally to the Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the urban context . Finally the building and the surrounding will co
function to empower the weaving craftsman and to achieve a new cultural identity and an economic stability to the basket crafting
community by REOPENING BASKET HALL adapting the contemporary world with a new face which will be reincarnated as the KALUTARA BASKET MUSEUM.

Technical information

Kalutara has been developing as a "ribbon city" used by people except for it's tenants as a passing by city which leads to Colombo and Galle on either ends leaving it with a grave lack of public spaces and focusing more towards spiritual functions. So the master plan encourages to develop underused spaces to be developed as a breathing yet functional public spaces and putting buildings to encourage recreational activities harmonizing with the spiritual values of the city. The Museum targets to exhibit it's architecture inspired from traditional Architectural practices by using "Materials of natural form" by following the structure with rustic concrete,exposed brick,stone, rustic timber and to detail the interior with hemp yarn extracted for the purpose of creating baskets in the museum and the community workshops.